The Fuller picture - Europe: The Secret Superpower

Dr. Roslyn Fuller is a lecturer in International Law based in Ireland. She is the author of Ireland’s leading textbook on International Law ‘Biehler on International Law: An Irish Perspective’ (Round Hall, 2013). In addition to her academic work, she has also writes for the Irish Times, The Irish Independent and The Journal on topics of law, politics and education.
Roslyn has been researching democracy for over a decade and is the author of “Beasts and Gods: How Democracy Changed Its Meaning and Lost Its Way” (October 2015, Zed Books). She tweets at @roslynfuller and can be reached at fullerr@tcd.ie.

China and India aren't the only growing superpowers. Europe has come a long way in a short time and the continent's relationship with democracy is more than a little shaky.

It’s a well-known thing
within legal circles that international lawyers are the
free-spirited brethren of the guild. Of course, that requires you
to redefine your definition of a party animal to something like
this:

but all the same, it’s certainly a step up from the bureaucracy
of say, European law, where things are little but more like this:

I have to admit that even mention of the vast labyrinth of
interchangeable-sounding European treaties starts to send my
brain into protective lockdown. Normally, I prefer to deal with
more manageable things like the threat of nuclear war or the
re-feudalization of corporate America.

However, sometimes you don’t have those kinds of luxuries in life
and there comes a day when you have to venture into the
head-wrecking maze of European bureaucracy.

That day is this day.

Super-size our quaintness, please

There’s been a lot of talk about the rising superpowers of China
and India and rightly so. Do you know how many people there are
there? A properly representative version of Star Trek doesn’t
have 4/5th Caucasian crew members with a token Klingon thrown in,
my friend. I started learning Mandarin ten years ago.

But that should not detract from the other superpower that is on
the up: Europe.

That might come as a surprising statement, given the amount of
press that Europe gets about its inability to organize while
slowly circling the drain of economic oblivion.

We all know about Europe’s failures. But pause for a moment to
consider its successes:

- Appropriating the ability to write the vast majority of laws
for its citizens, not to mention to negotiate trade treaties,
such as TTIP

- Shocking its citizens into the idea of low-wage job
instability, with fewer social benefits, because of the need to
be ‘competitive’

- Creating Fortress Europe, the common travel zone that it’s just
about impossible to immigrate to

- A budding European army which the Continent shall duly send
wherever the hell it wants (we’ll return to this in a minute)

And that’s not all: the US takes a lot of flak for its actions at
international organizations like the UN and IMF (again, rightly
so), but what about the EU? After all, European states have two
of the five permanent seats on the Security Council, and 31
percent of the voting power at the IMF (the US only has 16.75
percent). Furthermore, what is the greatest economic power on
earth today? The European Union: 500 million residents and 24
percent of the world’s GDP. That’s more than the US, more than
China and more than anyone else, either.

The European Union spends about €300 million a year to market
itself as a soft, friendly organization that just doesn’t want war and
for everyone (everyone European that is) to culturally understand
each other.

But honestly, did you really believe that?

Building the most powerful trading bloc on earth wasn’t some kind
of unfortunate side-effect to pursuing love, peace and all that
jazz.

And the most powerful trading bloc on Earth is not really in all
that much trouble. Sure, there might be a few developments.
Britain might eventually throw its lot in with the US instead (in
which case, I will formally build a shrine to George Orwell who
predicted just that in 1984); Greece might temporarily get
expelled, but altogether the show must go on (and every effort
will be made to ensure that it does go on), because Europe is
already far too integrated to do a U-turn now and is facing far
too much pressure from other superpowers (old and new) to do
anything else.

And that’s very worrying: because Europe is not a democracy.

Will the real
dictatorship please stand up?

If there is one thing that strikes terror into the hearts of
North Americans and Europeans (other than the words ‘tax
time’, of course) it is “dictatorship.” Countless
trees have been massacred in the service of displaying the
ruthless dictatorships of Russia (currently run by one elected
President and one elected parliament) and Venezuela (same deal).
In fact, the words “undemocratic regime” has become an
unending mantra.

I assure you that is but
the caring connoisseur’s selection of what is out there.

But let’s turn that little spotlight around for a moment. How is
Europe governed?

Through your national parliament?

Guess again. Over 80 percent of all national laws actually
originate at EU level.

Through the European Parliament?

Oh my.

The European Union’s law-making apparatus is a three-part act.
The first part is the European Parliament, whose members are
directly elected. The European Parliament basically rubberstamps
laws. Ditto the European Council, which is composed of the
current European heads of government. Every time the European
Parliament manages to affect any law in any way at all it is
heralded as an enormous success for democracy.

I await the headline, “Duma affects law: Russia world’s
greatest democracy” with baited breath. In the meantime, the
explanation continues.

The real power at the European Union is not the Parliament or the
Council, but the European Commission, which actually writes the
laws. Commissioners are nominated by national governments and
rubber-stamped by the European Parliament. Take a flick through
the Commission and you’ll notice that it is full of people who,
considering the gravity of their work, keep a pretty low profile.
Take a flick through each of their individual agendas and you’ll
also notice the Commissioners’ many meetings with
“organizations or self-employed individuals” which is
diplomatic-talk for lobbyists. This is marketed as the last word
in government accountability.

Yes, Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis met with air
Baltic on January 16 for “exchange of views.” What did I
tell you? Total transparency.

So to recap: the flying-under-the radar Commissioners with their
calendars of lobbyist meetings are the real power in Europe, with
the Parliament and Council playing along. It makes for a great
way to get things done while completely avoiding public
discussion about it. In fact, its common knowledge that any
activity that is unpopular nationally gets farmed out to European
level because the convoluted decision-making process makes it
possible for national governments to pretend they had nothing to
do with it.

So even if governments on the other side of the globe were
rampaging about shoving fistfuls of fraudulent ballots into
ballot boxes, in a crass way that would still show a certain
residual respect for the processes of democracy that isn’t
present within the European Union itself.

When people tell you that the world’s biggest economic powerhouse
isn’t a democracy, they are right. It just also isn’t China,
that’s all.

That’s worrying enough onto itself, of course. But economics is
just one plank of world power. The other one is military power.

There’s no surer way to make a war inevitable than to prepare for
one

Before German novelist Nobel Laureate Gunter Grass passed away
earlier this month, he gave a final interview expressing his
worries about future conflict, that the world was sleepwalking
into a major war, fuelled, at least in part, by a focus on
armament as opposed to diplomacy.

And although Grass did not mention the European Union
specifically in his interview, we can clearly see a shift towards
rearmament on the continent.

Last September NATO’s EU members committed to increase military
spending to two percent of GDP by 2020. That isn’t two percent of
budget or tax revenue – it’s two percent of the entire gross
domestic product. Their current combined GDP is slightly more
than €12 trillion, so two percent of that is €255 billion.

It’s not quite as much as the US, which currently spends $580
billion annually on “defense,” but it’s still a lot of
money to be laying out for new tanks and helicopters when you’re
simultaneously raising taxes and cutting back social services.

Current estimates on a four-person flight to Mars are about $4
billion, meaning that for less than the European defense budget,
we could send the entire European Commission to Mars with cash to
spare. Or we could eradicate infectious diseases, or buy most of
the world’s tropical islands or give every man; woman and child
on earth a $50 bill. The list of things one can spend money on
without blowing oneself up is actually quite long.

Nonetheless, EU countries have already plunged into defense mode,
upping their spend on military acquisitions to what one expert
described as a level unprecedented in European history for
nations not actually at war. This jump to spend has largely been fuelled
by sightings and speculation of sightings of Russian airplanes
and submarines around Europe. I personally have yet to find a
report of a confirmed sighting of any Russian military apparatus
within the territorial waters or airspace of a European country
without its permission. The complaints are about Russian aircraft
(and/or submarines) flying close to European airspace, which is
actually perfectly legal.

It’s all been used to raise the specter of a Russian land
invasion of Europe, because Russia, apparently does not have
enough land, doesn’t care if it starts a nuclear war and is eager
to try to incorporate us lot into Russia, as this would be
apparently be a completely feasible and well-thought out plan.
Only a few of the recent headlines include:

“NATO would be powerless to stop a Russian invasion of
Eastern Europe, saystop British general”; “Germany to
Move Against Russia If BalkansInvaded” “Vladimir Putin ‘wants to regain
Finland’ for Russia” and “Lithuaniaprepares for a feared Russian
invasion”

While exaggerating (exponentially) the chances of a Russian
invasion of Europe, all of these articles recklessly minimize the
dangers that any such hypothetical conflict would entail,
desensitizing their readers to the true nature of modern warfare.

The truth is that it is highly unlikely that anyone in a position
of power within Europe actually believes that the Russians are
coming. Instead, the world’s fourth superpower is serving as a
useful paper tiger for the European Union to pursue its own
policies: centralization of unaccountable power, severe
free-market liberalization with a wealth transfer from poor to
rich, and a build-up of unified military capability, which will
eventually be used to enforce foreign policy goals, probably
mainly in Africa, where many European nations have a
paternalistic post-colonial relationship with their former
colonies. And it has all been done with next to no public
discussion while being heralded as the democracy made manifest.

And that’s why the superpower I’m most worried about is the
secret one: Europe.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.